Program History

The roots of the TCD program go back over fifty years of evolving interdisciplinary initiatives at the University of Florida. TCD traces its roots to Dr. Charles Wagley, an internationally well-known anthropologist, who moved from Columbia University to the University of Florida in 1972. Establishing the Tropical South America Program, Marianne Schmink notes that Dr. Wagley “began an enduring legacy at UF interdisciplinarity, collaborative research and training focused on the problems and solutions of tropical development, and support for students as future Leaders”. Gradually becoming more formalized, the program has maintained its focus on experimenting with new courses and learning approaches, bringing in visiting professors, and building long-lasting collaborations with partners in Latin America, especially, but also in Africa and Asia. Today TCD draws on a dozen core faculty and over 100 faculty affiliates and ~80 graduate students in 27 academic units across UF. Since 1980, TCD programs have trained >500 graduate students from more than 20 countries around the globe.

  • During the 1970s and 1980s, several very active precursor programs that focused on the Amazon, and on tropical conservation, fed into the current TCD Program. These included the Tropical South America Program, founded by Charles Wagley, and later in the early 1980’s, the Amazon Research and Training Program (ARTP). These early efforts set a tone for the program that resonates until today: involvement by faculty and grad students across the UF campus; support for student research; development of team-taught core courses; and strong interactions with a network of researchers and practitioners around the world.
  • In the late 1980s, major new grants provided fellowships for students from Latin America and the Caribbean through an integrated TCD program that included students in both social and biological sciences. Substantial field-based research and training programs were established in Latin America, and the program developed unique skills courses and other student-centered learning activities, while consolidating a strong network with partners overseas.
  • In 1999–2000, the TCD program entered a new formal phase with an endowment fund, faculty appointed to TCD, and an established interdisciplinary curriculum. The endowment and the addition of core faculty allowed TCD to consistently fund student research and graduate training, and provided modest student support for innovative activities that complement traditional academic training, such as returning research results, practitioner experiences, student-led workshops, annual retreats, and orientations. Significantly, the endowment also served to leverage additional complementary funding to support new research and training initiatives on- and off-campus.
  • From 2000-2010, TCD partnered with others across campus on UF’s NSF interdisciplinary graduate student training grant entitled “Working Forests in the Tropics”, which supported research and training in lowland Bolivia, tri-national Southwest Amazon (MAP), eastern Amazon, and the tri-national Maya forest region. In 2005, the “Amazon Conservation Leadership Initiative” was established in TCD as a joint program with Forest Resources and Conservation to work in partnership with NGOs and in-country academic partners to train conservation leaders from the Amazon Basin, strengthen NGOs and agencies where they work and contribute to more effective on the ground conservation. TCD’s model of interdisciplinary training and educational approach was exemplified as an innovative learning and action platform, where students, faculty, and collaborators interact to address multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary challenges.

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Since 2010, TCD continues to play a central role in convening UF students and faculty interested in the theoretical and practical advancement of tropical conservation and development. TCD is recognized internationally as a key university program training leaders in this field. In collaboration with the Center for African Studies, TCD is building the African component of its programs and began a new Master’s program in 2010 as part of a global network in Sustainable Development Practice. In addition, TCD has strengthened its outreach in South America via the “Southern Cone Leadership Initiative” which focuses on development of future conservation leaders in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. In 2017, TCD partnered with the Andes-Amazon Initiative of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to host a workshop at UF that brought together Moore partners and TCD alumni from throughout South America. This dynamic group shared experiences prior to and during the 3-day “Tools and Strategies for Conservation and Development in the Amazon: Lessons Learned and Future Pathways” workshop. Building from this activity, TCD launched a new project on the “Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon” where working with partners, we aim create, strengthen and expand a Community of Practice for learning and reflection on the use of tools and strategies by key Amazon stakeholders to improve social-environmental governance and reduce threats from infrastructure development. The new project is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and is working in three focal mosaics in the Amazon region – Caquetá, Colombia, Loreto, Peru, and the Madeira Basin in Bolivia and Brazil.

In the past years, TCD core faculty have been strengthened with addition of several new faculty, including faculty working on indigenous knowledge systems, socio-ecological impacts of infrastructure projects, indigenous politics, human rights and environmental justice, political ecology, environmental governance and climate change adaptation. Strategic activities to be carried out include: expand our cutting-edge curriculum and skills-training program; strengthen our network of TCD students, faculty, alumni, and partners; diversify and strengthen TCD administration; and promote collaborative and team research on priority emerging themes.

To learn more about TCD’s history: